I work at Extreme Kites in St. Augustine. We recently had the pleasure of a visit/demo day from Jim Manning, the Northeast Florida SS technical rep. He recently provided us (via our forum) a nice write up which includes technical specifics on the Link including kite design, kite sizes, predicted wind ranges and pictures.

In addition, several kiters that demo'd the kite have offered their initial impressions of the Link. The demo day had winds of 12 to 20 knots.

are the wind ranges different depending on if it is setup using the bridle or the 5th line?

Yeah, I had the same question. You would think that in the 4 line (bow style) setting you would have much wider range...on the low end because the kite is pictured much flatter, and on the high end because of greater depower.

The slingshot manual/website does not give you any indication of this however. I don't know if it is just for liability or if there is actually something in the kite's design that makes it not as good at the higher end as some other SLEs.?!? I don't think that is the case, but it really is odd to me that the company line is still to push people to a 3 kite quiver, when it seems that a 2 kite quiver would be possible in 4 line mode. Could they be the only kite company being honest? "Sure, you can do it with one or two kites, but you'll be much happier with three!" I dunno.